Abstract
Paleo-compatibilism is the view that the freedom required for moral responsibility is not incompatible with determinism about the factors relevant to moral assessment, since the claim that we are free and the claim that the psychophysical elements are causally determined are true in distinct and incommensurable ways. This is to be accounted for by appealing to the distinction between conventional truth and ultimate truth developed by Buddhist Reductionists. Paleo-compatibilists hold that the illusion of incompatibilism only arises when we illegitimately mix two distinct vocabularies, one concerned with persons, the other concerned with the parts to which persons are reducible. I explore the view, its roots in Buddhist Reductionism, and its prospects.
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Notes
I follow Parfit’s convention of using ‘Reductionism’ to mean reductionism about persons; see Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 210. There is actually some controversy concerning Śāntideva’s own final view, but it is most probably not the Buddhist Reductionist view. Since he is a Mādhyamika, he is unlikely to have accepted the Buddhist Reductionist’s final ontology, one of impersonal, impartite particulars. Yet his discussion of the reactive attitudes is fully compatible with the formulation of Buddhist Reductionism that I discuss below. What seems likely is that in this discussion he provisionally adopts the view of the Buddhist Reductionist. This is a common strategy for Mādhyamikas.
See Peter F. Strawson, ‘Freedom and Resentment,’ Proceedings of the British Academy 48 (1962): pp. 1–25.
See Galen Strawson, Freedom and Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 25–60.
Galen Strawson actually says this. See op cit, p. 29. Of course what is logically impossible is only that there be the actual completion of such a series in a finite amount of time (assuming as well that any choosing involves some finite duration). Perhaps the argument has a suppressed premise that agents begin to exist at some determinate time.
This way of characterizing the distinction will work only if mereological reduction always proceeds from the whole directly to its impartite parts. This is surely false. Suppose that quarks are impartite. It would prove impossible to show how the usefulness of our talk of chariots is explained by the existence of quarks arranged chariot-wise. Instead the reduction will typically proceed through intermediate steps: the chariot reduced to wheel, felly, etc., the wheel reduced to iron atoms, etc. I shall nonetheless use the simplifying assumption that there are just two discourses, one (the conventional) containing among its denoting expressions only those that denote partite entities, and the other (the ultimate) containing among its denoting expressions only those that denote impartite entities, and that nothing in the domain of the first discourse is a proper part of anything else in that domain. Thus if the first discourse contained expressions that involved commitment to persons, and persons are proper parts of nations, then it could not contain expressions the use of which involves commitment to nations. This simplifying assumption renders both discourses unusable. The reality of language use would require a host of intermediary discourses. Still I think the simplifying assumption has considerable heuristic value, and so shall employ it here.
The conventional truth about persons conforms in this respect to the Nyāya view of the relation between persons and their mental states. According to Nyāya, desire, aversion, pleasure, pain, effort, merit and demerit, and cognition are all qualities (gunas) of the self. That Nyāya does not homuncularize such powers as volition no doubt reflects their reliance on the case (kāraka) theory of the Grammarians.
This is no doubt because none of their interlocutors espoused the view that these are incompatible with determinism. It seems one cannot be a compatibilist unless there are incompatibilists in the neighborhood.
It is not difficult to find fallacious arguments in Śāntideva’s work. For instance at Bodhicaryāvatāra 8.58 he argues that since one does not want to touch soil that is defiled with feces, it is irrational to wish to touch another person’s body, since that is the source of feces. As for the present argument’s efficacy, a compatibilist might claim that people find the argument persuasive for the same reasons that lead some to embrace incompatibilism.
In Personal Identity and Buddhist Philosophy: Empty Persons (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 47–51 I sketch how these capacities might figure into the Reductionist account of persons.
The phrase is Dennett’s. See Daniel Dennett, Elbow Room (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984) pp. 156–65.
This last question parallels the one Śāntideva’s opponent raises at 8.32ab. Both involve the point that reasons-based explanation requires contra-causal freedom. For Kant’s formulation of this view see Allen E. Wood, Kant’s Ethical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) p. 177. For a slightly different formulation of the objection, see Marion Smiley, Moral Responsibility and the Boundaries of Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 167–73.
This would seem to render reductionism inexpressible. I explore this apparent paradox, and suggest a way to resolve it, in my article ‘Is Reductionism Expressible?’ (forthcoming).
For a discussion of the Kantian resolution and its difficulties see Allen Wolf, ‘Kant’s Compatibilism,’ in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, edited by Patricia Kitcher (NY: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), pp. 239–63.
Prior incarnations of some of the key ideas in this paper were presented at talks given at the University of Chicago, Harvard, and Columbia University. Many thanks to the participants in those conversations for useful questions and comments. I especially wish to thank Carol Rovane for her insightful and stimulating comments on the talk I gave to the Seminar on Comparative Philosophy at Columbia. Thanks are also due to Kenton Machina for helping me clarify my thinking on the issues.
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Siderits, M. Paleo-Compatibilism and Buddhist Reductionism. SOPHIA 47, 29–42 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-008-0043-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-008-0043-x